


Hallows' Eve

by hexburn (thestormapproaches)



Series: King's Crown Universe Oneshots [1]
Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cute, Domestic, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Flirting, Fluff, Halloween, Implied Sexual Content, King's Crown and Cat's Foot, M/M, Scary Movies, Traditions, Witches, comfort cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27680353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestormapproaches/pseuds/hexburn
Summary: Hallows' Eve is a time of trickery and magic, of showoffs and clever children conning their way to an extra treat, of simple food shared with family and little magical traditions.And, when Nick shares it with Tim, Hallow's Eve is a day he'll always love.---Set in the future of the King's Crown Universe. Reading King's Crown and Cat's Foot is not necessary to enjoy this work!
Relationships: Nick "LS" De Cesare/Tim "Nemesis" Lipovšek, Oskar "Selfmade" Boderek/Juš "Crownshot" Marušič
Series: King's Crown Universe Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024131
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Hallows' Eve

**Author's Note:**

> ok look i'm only *checks watch* 23 days late alright its fine  
> but i really do love writing about seasonal things, and so since this doesn't fit in the kccf timeline as it is right now, why not make a oneshot?
> 
> takes place several years into the future of the King's Crown universe
> 
> thank you to [NymeriaStarks](archiveofourown.org/users/nymeriastarks) for beta-ing!

There’s a suspicious lack of sound when Nick first comes to consciousness. He doesn’t think much of it; sometimes Tim gets up early and shuts off the little noise machine out of habit when he goes to make coffee. With a yawn, Nick eases his cat-ears out and snuggles back into the sheets.

Tim not being in bed is what makes Nick actually pay attention to the world around him. There’s a soft creak from just outside the bedroom door and his ears reflexively twist to get a better read on the situation. But there aren’t any noises for at least a few minutes, so Nick finds himself drifting off again, even though there’s no boyfriend in his bed to cuddle.

He wakes up again, more violently, when someone creeps up and grabs his shoulder, and Nick bolts upright, ears flattened and ready for battle.

But it’s just Tim.

“I got youuu,” Tim giggles and croons, a bright smile on his face. “Happy Hallows’ Eve, sunflower.”

Nick laughs with sleepy relief. “Happy Hallows’ Eve, buttercup. Meanie.”

But even as Nick pouts and pretends to be angry as he pulls Tim down onto the bed next to him, he pinches Tim’s cheek fondly and presses kisses onto his nose, his cheeks, those pretty fluttery eyelashes and his lips. Nick hums into the kiss and Tim cooes back, a little sleepy harmony.

“Mmm... You’re wrinkling my hat, you know.”

“What hat?” Nick says quickly, tossing Tim’s hat onto the floor behind them. “I don’t see a hat.”

“Nice try, sunflower.” Tim rolls his eyes and snickers softly as Nick hugs him closer, probably crumpling at least a few of the ruffles in his nice black sleeves. He’s all dressed up for Hallows’ Eve, but who cares? Certainly not Nick, not when it’s this early. They snuggle close in the early morning, not yet light outside. It’s warm, though, and Nick is used to the darkness. “This apartment still feels too big,” Tim says quietly, interrupting the peaceful silence.

“Right now it does,” Nick murmurs, “but it won’t in the future.” Not with more plants and/or pets, and certainly not with- w-with children, if- if that’s what Tim would also want. But who knows, really, Nick shouldn’t think quite that far into the future, he’s recently turned 30 only a month and a half ago, he shouldn’t- having children is a bit-

He clears his throat and buries his blush in Tim’s chest, and Tim giggles and hugs him close. “I know it won’t feel big in the future, but for now...” Tim trails off.

“It does feel big,” Nick agrees.

“That’s what you said last night.”

“Shut up, buttercup,” Nick retorts with a snort and an even darker blush.

“The privacy of our own apartment is pretty nice, though,” Tim says innocently. “No having to be quiet so Jus and Oskar won’t hear us through the walls.”

“Shut up, buttercup,” Nick says again, almost whining as his face turns hot and red.

“We could even do something right now, if we wanted to,” Tim says as light as a feather, tone almost playful even as his words send a shiver down Nick’s spine.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, sugar,” he warns in a reverent whisper.

“What makes you think I can’t keep that one, hmm?”

Needless to say, the rest of their morning activities are much more pleasant than being awoken by a scare.

\---

When they get to the shop, ready to start the work for the day at the early hour of 5 in the morning, Jus is already awake, by some miracle named pure childish excitement for Hallows’ Eve. They’ll be closing the shop early today to celebrate Hallows’ Eve and prepare for Samhain tomorrow, and Nick has the full two days off of his own job in the Spirit Realm. Returning to a workday in the shop feels like coming home, in a sense. It’s bound to be a fun time, and Nick admittedly is rather excited to see all the schoolchildren’s costumes as they perform magic tricks for treats and visit homes and shops throughout the district. He faintly remembers dressing up, too, when he was a very little boy in a tiny town in America.

One of the rare good memories.

But now he has Tim at his side, and, with any luck or a blessing from Varus, they’ll be making many more good memories in the years to come, and so Nick just nudges Tim’s side and starts laying out the soul cakes and cookies with black frosting and orange sprinkles on a tray for them to hand out. Tim’s adorable ruffles on his sleeves look silly, in Nick’s humble opinion, but he does look rather cute in that black shirt and those matching black slacks, and Nick pops up the brim of Tim’s hat to kiss his cheek.

Tim rolls his eyes and gives Nick a kiss, and Oskar wrinkles his nose at them. “I’m glad you two have your own apartment now,” he teases.

“So are we,” Tim retorts with his best attempt at a wink, and they all break into peals of laughter.

\---

Time flies by. The best trick of the day is easily Zara’s, with a lovely rose conjured of pure magic that grows from her hand and spirals up, blooming in a matter of seconds and with perfect formation. Then again, she’s in university by now, as are Matyas and Marek and Norman and Zhiqiang, so their antics don’t quite count among the hordes of young children vying for sweet treats. They’re still quite cute, scampering along together and Zara still holding Matyas’s hand like they’re all still in high school. Aside from her, one little girl - “an Annie devotee,” Tim notes by the charm hanging around her neck - uses illusion and fire magic to transform her teddy bear into a friendly giant. Jus rewards her with an extra soul cake for her hard work.

After most of the children have made their way through the neighbourhood by late afternoon, Jus takes the extra soul cakes and his chair back inside. It’s time for making their own Hallows’ Eve feast, now.

They cook plenty of food for their little four-person family of sorts, from fancier soul cakes with nuts and dried cranberries to fresh bread and honey-cinnamon butter to colcannon with fluffy, buttery potatoes to a tasty barmbrack, each corner of the small loaf studded with raisins and dried berries and whisky-soaked almond slivers. They divide up the barmbrack in quarters, one piece each for their little four-person celebration. Just like the year before, Jus’s piece somehow manages to have the coin, a symbol of prosperity and bounty for the year ahead, but now Oskar’s piece has the ring, and both Tim and Nick tease him about its promise of soon-coming marriage. Jus simply rolls his eyes, but it doesn’t take sharp eyes to see his faint blush. As for Tim, he finds a pea in his - so no marriage for him and Nick just yet, or so the superstition holds - and Nick’s corner of the barmbrack has an entire fig embedded in the centre. This is a new one; last year’s surprise was a candied apple slice that made Tim worry there was a bone in his bread.

Jus giggles incessantly as Nick fishes the fig out from his slice. Clearly, he’s already under the effects of the mulled wine Oskar made. “That’s a fun one,” he cheers. “Fertility!”

“What?!”

“Gonna have a babyyy,” Jus teases.

“That’s not physically possible,” Nick answers, just in case Jus read one of those amusing but unrealistic alpha-omega works online, the ones where male half-cats like him can bear children if they’re born a certain way.

“Adopting!” Jus says with a glint in his eye. “But that’s just a superstition. Maybe it doesn’t come true.”

Nick steals a glance at Tim to discern whether he might be interested, but Tim is already stuffing his face with the delicious, fruitcake-like barmbrack, and so Nick happily follows suit.

\---

Once their feast is over, both couples part ways as they’ve always agreed to for their holidays. After all, they spend almost every day in and out together, aside from Nick, who has taken a job in the Spirit Realm organising the duelling matches, and so Tim would rather spend the night alone with Nick in the same way that Jus and Oskar want some alone time, too.

Plus, since they have this lovely new flat, might as well make use of it.

“Movie time?” Tim asks eagerly, and Nick tenses with a nervous giggle.

“Sure, sure,” he says. Tim always picks scary movies for Hallows’ Eve, eerie things with jumpscares that make him squeak with laughter and Nick yelp in fear, or haunting mysteries that leave Nick’s heart aching with dread and a desperate need to cuddle up in Tim’s safe, warm arms.

With a smirk and a childishly excited clap, Tim hops up from the sofa to get his old laptop and their softest blankets. Nick puts one of the decorative sofa cushions in his lap and preemptively squeezes it tight, so he’ll be ready to hug Tim constantly as Tim sits in his lap through the movie.

The movie is bad. Very, very bad. Not as in production, no- in terms of production value, the movie is well-done, and the plot is just complex enough without being too taxing on the brain, and the cinematography of the film is clearly skilful. The scariness factor, on the other hand, is off the charts. Nick quite literally bursts into tears at one of the horrifying jumpscares, and only two minutes later he taps out. Any more of this and he’ll never fall asleep again, not even with Tim’s lovely, soothing warmth around him. With gentle caresses and apologetic kisses, Tim eases Nick back down to reality.

Reality is good. Really, really good. Tim’s weight is firmly in Nick’s lap, still, and he rubs his fingers over Nick’s flattened ears, and he peppers Nick’s hair with kisses, cradling Nick’s head to his chest and wiping Nick’s frightened tears with his thumbs. “ ‘m sorry,” he murmurs, “that was too much, huh?”

Meekly, Nick nods and cowers as close to Tim as physically possible.

“Alright, sunflower, come on, let’s get ready for bed and then I’ll keep you safe so you can sleep.”

“I don’t wanna shower alooooone,” Nick whines quietly.

“Fine, fine,” Tim concedes, and Nick’s face lights up as he scampers along behind Tim, thrilled at the thought of showering with Tim again.

It’s not like they don’t normally see each other naked. They’ve reached a point in their relationship that neither of them is particularly sensitive to the other’s bare body, and Tim has a habit of forgetting to bring underwear with him to the shower even when they were still sharing Jus and Oskar’s house, so he’s made more than a few walks of shame with a towel wrapped around his waist. And they’re both pretty used to changing clothes in front of each other; it’s just faster than grabbing clothes from the cramped closet they shared at their old home and going back to the bathroom to change.

But times like these, where Tim’s fluffy hair gets bogged down with water and Nick presses soapy kisses to Tim’s temple, are rare in a good way, a special treat once reserved for nights when Jus and Oskar were out.

“You’re cute,” Nick murmurs, nuzzling Tim’s neck and then snorting water out of his nose as it tries to flow in.

Tim giggles as Nick shakes his head, so cat-like and adorable. “Weren’t you scared about the movie monsters just a few minutes ago?”

“Well, your cuteness scared them away.” He winks at Tim with a little smirk that persuades absolutely no one of his innocence.

“Mhm, sure. Come on, let me wash your hair.” And, since Tim is so good with those hands of his, Nick bows his head down and lets Tim massage shampoo through the blonde strands until the sudsy foam piles up. “You know you really shouldn’t leave your cat-ears out for showering, right? You might get water in them,” Tim chides.

“But I like having my ears out around you,” Nick grumbles, though he does indeed magick his ears away into normal human ones again.

“Me specifically? Why, is it because I give the best ear-rubs?”

“And tail-rubs, and back-rubs, and kisses, and hugs, and hand-holding,” Nick adds with a silly grin.

“You know,” Tim says with a raised eyebrow that looks so adorably disapproving that Nick really can’t take him seriously, “you don’t have to bat your eyelashes at me just to get me to cuddle you tonight. I was gonna do that anyway.”

Nick pouts and makes his cat-ears reappear, as well as his tail.

“You’re going to get another ear infection like that,” Tim sighs, though the corners of his lips quirk up even as he tries to hide it by facing away from Nick and putting the soap back.

“Well, now I’m doing it out of spite,” Nick teases.

“You’re such a handful. Scoot over, I need to rinse off.”

Just to mess with Tim that little bit more, and to try to wipe the last nightmarish remnants of the memory of the movie away, Nick steps directly into the shower spray and blocks it all from reaching a glowering Tim. Nick wrinkles his nose and sticks his tongue out for added mischief.

Tim just rolls his eyes and pinches the tip of Nick’s ear to pull him to the side as Nick yelps. “Very cute, dear,” Tim grumbles sarcastically. He manages to weasel his way into the shower’s range by some miracle. Grudgingly, Nick sighs and gives in, and he leans his weight against Tim’s warm, if bony, shoulders, not caring at all that soap and bubbles run down his sides and he’s barely cleaned up and the fur on his ears is admittedly getting uncomfortably wet.

Once Tim finally convinces Nick to stop dawdling and wash up already (and put his ears away, please, he refuses to take Nick to the doctor for his own stupidity again), their bed welcomes them. It’s actually made for two people to share, now, though Nick and Tim are so used to having to hug at night just to stay on Tim’s smaller bed that they barely use any of the extra space they now have. The warm, fuzzy blankets and extra quilts make for a cosy place, perfect to cuddle and snuggle and nap in the sunlight from their new south-facing, slightly-dusty window on occasional days off. For Hallows’ Eve and Samhain, Tim had hung up a few strings of herbs and dried flowers along the wall next to the window, and their sun-bleached scents still cling to the room, even as darkness falls outside. “Tomorrow’s Samhain,” Tim mumbles. The sleepiness and pure exhausting fun of the day must have finally caught up to him.

“It is,” Nick answers just as quietly.

Tim blinks at him. “Worried?”

“A little. Wondering what new cats will be in the ghost pack this time,” Nick says, voice barely more than a whisper. Every year that he’s joined Tim for Samhain visitations from the dead, it seems like his old pack dissolves further and further. Nick wishes he could have protected them all.

“I bet they’ll love the apartment,” Tim answers. “I’ll set some of the moving toys out, the ones you can play with on your own.”

“That would be great.” Nick’s heart throbs with happiness and love, so much love, overwhelming his sleepiness until he feels giddy on emotions. Maybe that scary movie really did put him more on edge than previously thought.

“So, what did you think of the- the fig thing?” Nick asks when he still can’t fall asleep.

Tim shrugs, his sharp shoulders poking against Nick’s arms but not unwelcome. “It’s just a superstition. Doesn’t have to come true.”

“It’s always worked so far, though,” Nick points out. Jus always gets the coin, and the shop does well; Oskar used to always get the pea and he and Jus still aren’t married; Tim got the candied apple slice and his scars finally responded to treatment, now only faint white lines mark the scratches and stars lie over the old puncture sites; Nick got the ring and he and Tim have moved in together, which agrees with the ring’s broader symbolism of good romantic health.

Again, Tim shrugs, and this time Nick pouts and scoots so that his arms are wrapped around Tim’s waist and Tim’s arms are slung over his less-sharp shoulders. “I doubt it’s an actual kid, then, if we’re not getting married yet. I’d rather get married first, then have kids.”

Nick hums; sounds good to him.

“Some people consider plants like children, y’know? Especially since they talk to me. So a child could just be a new plant.”

“You got like 5 of those last week. I doubt it’s something that normal.”

“Maybe a pet, then?”

“...it could be a pet,” Nick concedes.

“If we got a cat, you’d be able to talk to it, right? You could talk to Soves,” Tim muses out loud.

Nick nods. “So I guess if we got a pet, it would be like a kid. Maybe that’s what it means.”

“Maybe,” Tim shrugs again, and Nick is glad for how they’ve rearranged their limbs.

“You know this is how the superstition gets fulfilled, right?” Tim chuckles. “Like, I guarantee Jus and Oskar are going to have a talk like this with Anton, too, as soon as he comes back. And that’s how the superstition works, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Tim points out with a wry grin.

Nick just rolls his eyes and tucks his head under Tim’s chin, rubbing his ears against Tim’s face to make him squirm and laugh.

Sleepy from the warm hot chocolate and nonalcoholic mulled wine, full of colcannon and bread and barmbrack and pumpkin pie, soothed by Tim’s habitual ear-rubs and their sleepy murmurs traded under new blankets in the light of an old moon, everything seems to melt away. It’s full, the moon, and beautiful, though Tim is more beautiful with how his hair seems to glow silver with moonlight.

Nick yawns. “Go to sleep, babe,” Tim murmurs. “Or don’t, we have tomorrow off...”

“You’re cosy,” is Nick’s only reply.

Through the window, its curtains tossed aside so Nick and Tim can wake up with the sun, Diana smiles down on them as they cuddle close and drift off into Lillia’s dreamy forests, sated in a way that almost makes Nick want to cry. Tim makes him feel things, to say the least, things that make Nick feel like a child again and yet more capable and strong than ever before.

“I love you,” Nick manages to mumble before he entirely falls asleep.

“Love you too.”

A contented purr works its way out of Nick’s throat and vibrates through their chests. Distantly, Nick wonders if he could ever be happier than he is right now. But he’s thought that before, with Tim at his side.

And Tim has made Nick even happier, every single time.


End file.
